In desktop video conferencing and other desktop collaboration systems, data needs to be sent among participants in the collaborative session. Some of the participants may be connected over a local area network (LAN), while others may be located at a remote site and connected via a wide area network (WAN). Frequently, each participant must be able to send graphic, text, video, or other data directly to all of the other participants.
In existing systems, a participant typically sends data to the other participants by sending the entire packet of data serially to each other participant. This can be very inefficient. The sending of large packets of data ties up bandwidth on the networks and the same data may be transmitted repeatedly over the same path.
The present invention overcomes this and other problems, as will be shown in the remainder of the specification, referring to the attached drawings.